Flapped
by S.Zix
Summary: Smoke, giant cages, and being away from her?  They're all bad for the flowers.


Challenge from Midnight at the Genesis Awards Opposite Fic Exchage-

**Pairing/Characters:**

Reno/Aerith, preferably one sided on Reno's part, equally cool if you have unspoken returned feelings from Aerith.

**Terms that must be met:**

No real set time line limit. Stretch it out as far as you need.

Reno's PoV.

Must have that inner struggle of his feelings for Aerith over his job, his boss's own feelings for her, and most of all his own self.

Anything else is okay.

* * *

**Flapped**

"You think I'd do well in Weapons R&D? I'm pretty smart."

It's a game they play; Aeris pretends neither of them knows why Shinra wants her and throws out suggestions while Reno turns them down. At the moment, Aeris sits, rebraiding her hair and tipping her head back and forth. Reno only half watches her. He focuses on the ceiling hemorrhaging sunlight over the Church meadow and wonders why the flowers don't burst into flames: scorching yellow torches, licking the ceiling in a flash, then disintegrating.

Reno takes a drag from his cigarette, drying out his throat so he doesn't laugh. "No way."

They sit next to one another in the church pews, a foot between them that neither acknowledges. Aeris ties her braid and glares at Reno. "It's so boring when you come around. Where's Tseng?"

Reno almost laughs. _Him_. More boring than Tseng? "That's it," he says, sprinkling ash onto the floor next to his boot, "we're going out."

"Out where?" She sounds almost excited, the light in her eyes as full and sweltering as the sunlight.

"Bar," he says.

Of course, it isn't where she wants to go. The pink bow in her hair practically droops. Reno puts out his cigarette in the space between them and shrugs. He can't help it; she has a big cage.

* * *

Unflappable. That's what they call him in the Turks—or, at least, that's what they would call him if they possessed Reno's uncanny ability to select the perfect word for each situation—and why shouldn't he be? Why shouldn't they all be unflapped? They are _Turks_. But Reno isn't just a Turk; he isn't Rude, no. He's the super Rude: above and beyond stoic. Rude clams up, but Reno keeps babbling after he's killed a terrorist's fuzz-headed baby. He could probably drop the entire plate on the slums—his slums, the slums from which he crawled his way to the top—without needing a smoke.

Well, he'd need a smoke, but no more than usual.

Yet Tseng has unflappable Reno baby-sitting. The boss should know better; Reno couldn't be held responsible for damaged merchandise. If something goes wrong, no one should expect it to flap him. He won't, _can't_ be flapped. He'll take her to a bar, and if she loses an eye, it's her problem—and Hojo's.

_Not_ Reno's.

* * *

The bar in Sector Five is loud, like most bars in the Slums, and full of men. Glasses chink, a handful of boys sit in the back corner, drinking down their first pay checks and singing 'Turquoise Materia.' Aeris does not seem to notice. She sits on a red leather bar stool, next to a thick man, an ace of clubs and an ace of hearts tattooed on his left bicep, a bottle of Corel style beer in his hand.

"Ever tried to use those in a card game?" Aeris asks him.

He pretends not to have noticed her before, clenches his beer bottle, and turns to flash his teeth in her direction. "They're just good luck charms," he says. "Never even played a game of poker in my life."

Reno smells alcohol on the man's neck, under his arms—like he bathed in it—even standing several feet behind her. He rolls his eyes, grabs a pool cue, and approaches the boys at the back of the bar. He has more entertaining things to do.

The boys end on the second verse and look up to see Reno slapping a thirty gil note on the table.

"You up for a round?" he asks.

The youngest looking one, blond, pushes back his chair as he stands. He smirks at Reno, wavering a little on his feet, and nods his head three times. "What you think? It's jus' gonna' be eeeeaasy?"

Reno raises an eyebrow and swings the pool cue over the heads of the other three boys at the table. The first two duck, but it catches the third one on the right side of his head. He swears and rubs at his temple.

"I'm going to go with yes," Reno says.

"You're on, then!" The blond-haired boy shoves his fist into his right pocket and spills loose gil notes and coins on the table with a clatter. "That's good, right?"

Reno, eyebrow still raised, reaches into his pocket for his box of cigarettes and lights another one. He takes a puff. The loose change stands out on the table like the flowers on the floor of Aeris' church, and Reno thinks that these are _his_ flowers. He counts them; it looks more like fifty gil than thirty, but they don't seem to notice, and Reno doesn't mind not telling them about it. "Looks good to start," he says.

Back by the bar, he hears Aeris laugh. She sounds a bit like a chocobo caught around the throat. It isn't very pretty; he's always maintained he would never hear anyone call her laughter anything beyond bearable, but then the guy at the bar says, "You got a great laugh, Pretty Lady."

Reno shakes his head, chewing on the inside of his cheeks. He watches Blond Boy line up the pool balls in a triangle, not getting the order right. Blond Boy puts three striped balls in a row in the upper right corner. Reno just raises his eyebrow again and says "Challengee breaks first."

Blond Boy sends his pool cue straight down the middle of the table. It screeches as he peels away fabric.

"Hey, careful with that!" the bar tender calls. Reno doesn't know why he bothers; there are already strips of fabric missing from the table, and there aren't any other pool sets in Sector Five. People would play on it if two of the legs broke off, and they had to use passed out drunks to prop it up.

Blond Boy looks back at Reno, his mouth slack.

"Aw, go again," Reno says, sliding the pool cue behind his neck. "That one didn't count."

* * *

The blond kid smiles and pulls back his cue. This time, he hits the ball.

It turns out that the kid isn't as bad at pool as Reno thought he would be. Reno still manages to win, but the game goes on longer than he expected.

"You wanna' go again?" Reno asks as the kid watches him rake up his 50 gil, his jaw slack.

"Don't got nothing else to play with."

"Well"—Reno takes a drag on his cigarette and blows the smoke in Blond Boy's face—"how about I buy the next round of drinks, and we start you a tab?"

He isn't good for the money, Reno knows, but there's something about the eagerness in him, the confidence that Reno wants to break. Sometimes it just feels good to take that away.

Blond Boy nods eagerly and dives back to his table. "You guys got any cash?"

At the bar, Reno slaps ten of the kid's loose coins on the table and orders five drinks. He takes a moment to look down the bar at Aeris. She is flushed, bright red; her flesh looks garish and ugly clashing against her dress. She's holding a bottle of beer and laughing. Reno has kept his ears open the whole time, but she has only told the tattooed man all about the flowers in the church: white chrysanthemum for truth, Freesia for spirit, yellow tulips for love. He's heard it all before.

Reno takes a swig of Midgar Black Pearl—he likes it because it reminds him a little of getting his tongue beaten by an EM stick—and hears something he had not expected to hear come out of her mouth.

"I'd _love_ to go home with you," Aeris says, "but I came here with a guy. See, he comes and sits with me—he's kind of like a bodyguard, but don't worry—only he's a little cranky. He doesn't like it when I talk about flowers, or at least he pretends he doesn't, but I see him looking at them. I'd bet you anything he'd come to the church if I weren't there."

He doesn't know why it makes him so angry, but Reno slams his Black Pearl on the table, stamps out his cigarette, and stalks out of the bar. He hates making a scene, especially since Aeris sees it and follows him out the door.

* * *

There's a stack of letters on Tseng's desk. They all smell like Yarrow, which Aeris has told Reno is supposed to symbolize good health. They're all addressed to the same person, too: Zackary Fair, SOLDIER First Class, wherever he is. Tseng guards them like a jealous Malboro and blows smoke at anyone who threatens to touch them. After a while, they don't smell like Yarrow anymore.

Reno flops onto the chair in front of Tseng's desk and puts his feet up. "Hey Boss," he says, "you ever gonna' send those?"

Tseng, in the carefully cultivated way that he does, ignores Reno. The Turk leader jots something down on his desk, and Reno makes a show of looking over cupped hands to read what he has written.

"Huh," he says, "you goin' away again?"

"Yes," Tseng says, as if his hearing has magically recovered, "so that means—"

"I got Pinky duty, right." Reno runs his hand through his hair. He doesn't ask the question that always comes into his mind when Tseng requests this particular favor of him. _What happens when just watching her isn't good enough anymore_? He instead lets his eyes wander to the stack of letters. He imagines Zack dead on the face of Mount Nibelheim, the birds picking pieces of skin from between his fingers.

Zack isn't dead, though. Reno just knows it would be better if he were. It doesn't bother him, really. _What bothers him_ is the stack of letters on Tseng's desk. He can't place it, but there's something about the slant of the paper stair case, the fact that the whole damn thing could topple over and flutter down the side, and she wouldn't even _know_—

"Reno, would you mind getting me a book of stamps from the other room?" Tseng asks.

The subordinate Turk gets up from his seat and glances back at the letters as he heads for the door. It's good, he thinks, that she doesn't know. Maybe, while Tseng's gone this time, he'll break into his office and light them on fire.

* * *

Reno stares up at the black underbelly of the plate, imagining stars. He pulls out another cigarette and lights it, listening to the match spark a second before shaking the flame out. He takes a quick puff and wonders if he could lock the front door of the bar before Aeris makes it out after him. Funny how being a Turk prepares someone for breaking down doors, but teaches him nothing about closing them.

The door opens, Reno feels regret as if he secretly hoped it wouldn't, and Aeris slides out, leaning against the wall next to him. She follows his eyes up to the plate and delivers a bored groan.

"Go back inside," Reno snaps.

"No," she says, and starts humming 'Turquoise Materia.'

Reno could drop his cigarette. He could pull out his EM and threaten her, but frankly, he has gotten used to Aeris Gainsborough pretending that he doesn't have a commanding tone that strikes fear in the hearts of normal slumlings. In fact, he's a little amused. Who knew she acted like a fifteen year old boy when she got sloshed?

One of her green eyes flicks over to his cigarette. "Can I have one of those?"

Reno looks down at his box of cigarettes and counts them. They look a little bit more—but not much—like Aeris' flowers than gil. He shrugs and holds the box out to her. She opens her hand in turn and, with one swift tap of his index finger, a cigarette slides into her palm. Her hand is so pale that the white paper wrapped around the tobacco almost matches.

Aeris points the cigarette at Reno, white end facing him—part of him had expected her to try to hold the filter out for him to light—and he thumbs his lighter for her. "Got any tips for first time smokers?"

"Don't pull too hard."

Naturally, she does, and she ends up doubled over coughing, pounding her fist against her chest, her pink bow flopping above her head. Reno takes a long drag and blows the smoke up at the plate, a smug grin on his face.

Through the flimsy bar door, Reno hears his group of four boys break out into 'Turquoise Materia' again. A cart passes them, the flinging gravel adding a bass note. Two dogs whine at a light fixture instead of the moon. Candles in one house flicker out, leaving windows black. It's quaint, her cage, in a dead and broken kind of way.

By the time Reno's eyes stop roving around Sector Five, Aeris has straightened up. She holds her cigarette between her thumb and forefinger the way Reno does as she leans back against the wall of the bar and laughs. "I can't believe you smoke so many of these," she says. Reno notices that her cheeks are still flushed. Sweat glints around her collar bone, the elegant curve of her neck, as she slides down the bar wall and plops onto the dirt floor of the slums.

"At least I don't spend all of my time out talking to a guy with a couple o' aces on his arm instead of yours truly." Reno tries to sound smooth, suave like he likes to think of himself, but he cringes at the note of resentment that managed to slip into his voice.

"No." Aeris tries to take another drag from her cigarette, but only ends up puffing half-heartedly, and Reno doubts she can feel the nicotine. "You just hustle a bunch of kids for all they're worth and expect me to feel sorry for you later."

Reno checks his watch. It's already 21:15. "I should get going. Get up, and I'll walk ya' home."

Aeris shakes her head. "No way," she says, mocking him, "we're still 'out,' aren't we?"

"Momma' Gainsborough isn't going to be very happy."

Aeris narrows her eyes at him. "Like you care."

"You got a point." Reno shakes his head. "But the answer's still 'no.' Besides, aren't you supposed to be afraid of the Turks?"

Aeris stands up, wobbling on her knees. "Want to know a secret?" she whispers and then giggles, covering her face as it turns still redder.

"Shit," Reno says, "I'll bite."

Gainsborough shoves her face only two inches from his, batting away his cigarette with her hand. She smells like sweatpee, Reno notes, which is particularly ironic, considering how not shy she is acting at the moment. "I don't talk to Tseng when he's around."

Before Reno can react, Aeris leaps away and smiles. The light of the street lamps catch her cheek bones, bouncing back at him. It almost convinces him that there's a moon under the plate for a second.

"Huh?" he asks.

Because everyone gets a moment of extreme eloquence.

"But I thought you said—"

"I can make it home on my own," the flower girl interrupts him, as if she regrets sharing her secret. She looks even more flushed, and Reno starts to wonder if it's just the alcohol. "I always do."

After that, she turns around and darts in the direction of the cottage. She weaves a little bit as she walks, but she's right. She's been in the slums as long as he has, longer, and she's evaded Shinra. No one's caught her yet.

Reno realizes he's grinning stupidly, that he's smelling the sweetpea that still lingers in the air, and throws down his cigarette, smothering it with his heel. He goes inside and orders another Black Pearl.

* * *

Reno could tell Rude anything, and he did. That was being a Turk. Keep secrets from everyone but each other; as soon as that font of intimate knowledge shuts down, a Turk knows he isn't a Turk anymore. His partner has taken a hit on him.

It hasn't happened for a few years now.

The funny thing, though, is that Reno never tells Rude much about Aeris. When he finishes watching her for Tseng, he goes back above the plate—leaves her cage—to his office and pretends to sleep. Turks don't sleep, naturally.

Rude is always there; the night after Reno takes Aeris to the bar is no different. Lighting another cigarette, Reno hopes to cover the remains of the treacherous sweetpea smell; he wonders if the dregs are just in his head.

"How was watch?" Rude asks—well, grunts, more like.

"Usual." Reno situates himself in his chair and crosses his legs—body language research shows that crossed legs express both secrecy and vulnerability, and Reno likes mixed signals. He takes a white folder covered in Shinra logos from his desk: six stamps for high confidentiality. It contains details on where the remnants of AVLANAHCE might be located. A photograph features a large dark man, a machine gun bolted on one of his arms. Little metal barrels shine like sunflower heads.

Reno whistles. "Think the boss'd do me up like this? I'd look hot with a gun for an arm, wouldn't I? Everyone knows chicks dig guns. What do you think?"

Rude snorts. "You'd miss two-fisting at the bar. It'll never happen."

Staring at an explosives trading route from Sector Three to Sector Seven, Reno wonders if Tseng ever tells Rude about Aeris.

* * *

"What about SOLDIER?"

Aeris lays in the flower patch of the church, staring through the cracks defiantly at the sunlight as if trying to catch a glimpse of the sky, while Reno stands in the rafters.

Reno snorts, loud enough for her to hear all the way down at the floor of the church.

"I can hear you, you know!" she shouts.

"That's kind of the point."

Aeris gets to her feet, wiping streaks of pollen from her dress, and looks up into the rafters, trying to catch his shape. She can't see him with her eyes, but he knows Aeris can tell where he is; she always can. It's part of that thing they both pretend they don't know.

"I wouldn't smoke up there if I were you."

"You ain't me."

Gainsborough darts toward the side of the church, hidden under the rafters so that Reno cannot see. He groans and hopes she hasn't tried to run again; he would have to move, and he hates doing that nearly as much as he hates these times when Tseng leaves.

Reno almost bites through his tongue when he feels the wooden ledge he's perched upon wiggle underneath him. A pinch of ashes falls onto his pant leg, smolders for a moment until he slaps it away. "What do you think—?" Reno looks over the edge and sees her hiking up the ladder. "No way. You ain't coming up here."

Aeris, ignoring him, continues her ascent. He watches the ribbon bob over her head as she climbs. In a few seconds, she has climbed up and perched beside him, her legs crossed as she holds out her hand for another cigarette.

"Buy your own damn cigarettes," Reno says. "The Grab Bag has—hey!"

Aeris had reached into the breast pocket of his suit and pilfered his box of imports. Reno pretends to have been flapped, but he let her steal them. Naturally.

Gainsborough smiles wide and waves the box back and forth in front of Reno's face. "Canyon Spirits," the box proclaims. Box art portrays a great yellow flame that Reno recognizes as the Cosmo Candle.

"Where are these from?" Aeris asks as five cigarettes fall from the box and into her palm.

"Cosmo Canyon," Reno says, tucking the box back into his breast pocket. "The fire on the front always burns, or at least, that's what the natives say. My theory is that it goes out every once in a while, the guy who's supposed to be watching it panics, calls a hit on any witnesses, and starts it again."

"I bet you're right," Aeris says. It surprises Reno until she elaborates with, "Things like magic fires don't exist. It can't be any different from the fire in your lighter, and that goes out all the time."

Girls who can always tell when someone is watching them, they don't exist either. Naturally.

Aeris places one cigarette behind each of her ears and folds two of them into her braid before putting the last one between her lips and sucking on it, unlit. Reno notices that the foot long gap between them has vanished. He swallows, feels heat rise in palms, but he doesn't scoot away from her.

"I'd never buy a whole pack for myself," Aeris confesses, ignoring his unease.

Sighing, Reno waits for the ensuing health lecture. "Either smoke them or give them back; don't give me a diatribe."

Aeris finds Reno's lighter behind him and has to flick it a few times to get a flame to ignite. "Oh, I'll smoke them," she says. "It isn't about me or anything; smoke's bad for the flowers, so I have to limit myself."

Rolling his eyes, Reno fights back a smile. "Then I guess I should smoke more here."

Aeris scrunches her forehead as she takes a drag, refusing to rise to his bait. This time, she doesn't cough, and Reno raises an eyebrow. "When I was younger, kids would try to trade me cigarettes for flowers; they'd steal them from their parents. It was fine, because I could trade them for other things, but sometimes I would smoke one or two of them because I was curious. I stopped because I caught one of my drapes on fire. I don't think Mom ever found out, but after that, I was always worried I'd light the church on fire accidentally. It's so old, and I'd hate it if I couldn't grow flowers anymore."

Unflappable Reno ignores the blow to his pride. The night before, Aeris had treated him like any other guy at the bar, and it bothers him more than it should. It shouldn't surprise him. The list of lies she tells herself is a mile long, so lying to him wouldn't be a big deal for her, especially since he's a Turk. "I thought flowers grew at Momma' Gainsborough's too?"

"You can grow flowers anywhere, and any kind, you know?" Aeris twists one of the cigarettes in her braid with her fingers. "I like to grow a bunch of different ones so that I have one for every occasion. But they grow the best here."

"I can grow flowers?" Reno says, "I thought it was just you, Pinky."

Suddenly, Aeris becomes silent. She drops her braid; her hands fall like petals into her lap.

Reno allows himself another smug smile, his revenge for the last night's teasing, but it doesn't last long. She has a certain unflappability too.

"Sure you could!" Aeris says. "You just won't because you'd rather smoke, drink, and play pool. If you have a favorite flower, though, I'll teach you how to grow it. I can give you some soil and buy a pot to pay you back for the cigarettes. I bet your office looks so _ugly_, too. It could use some flowers."

As she talks she waves her hands, rocks back and forth, does everything in her power to distract herself from her own words.

"Fine,"—Reno licks his lips—"I like ugly flowers."

Exasperated, Aeris throws up her hands. "You'd probably just strangle the poor things with smoke anyway."

Uncrossing his legs, Reno glances at Aeris' neck. He tries to avoid admitting it to himself, but it's his favorite thing to look at; it has been since he met her. If she ever let her hair down, he'd probably stick her with his EM on principle.

She notices him staring and laughs so hard she chokes on the cigarette smoke again. It's that same damn caught chocobo laugh that forces Reno to grit his teeth, crushing his cigarette filter. He looks down the ladder at the flower meadow. The white lilies drink up the sunlight stupidly. Reno wonders what Aeris would do if he tried to use them as ash hoops.

Then, quite suddenly, he realizes that there is a very obvious question that he has never asked Aeris, and that he should have asked it, even if he never said anything else to her.

"Where do you get all of those flower seeds anyway?"

Aeris tilts her head, narrows her eyes at him. "I thought he told you?"

Reno's throat runs dryer than it does when he inhales smoke. "_Who_?"

She looks away from him, down at the empty pews, the light trickling from the open maw of the church ceiling, and doesn't say a word, but she doesn't have to; Reno knows.

"That's why you aren't afraid of us like you should be," Reno grumbles. "I should have guessed."

"It isn't that…" When Aeris looks back at Reno, her face falls. He wonders how he must look; he can't even understand his own frustration, a numbness floating like the smoke in the air. The worst part is the voice in his head that tells him that he should have thought to get Aeris imported seeds before Tseng; it's what she wants: the outside world.

"I am afraid of Tseng," she says, interrupting Reno's thoughts and blowing away the numbness. "I think that's why he brings them."

Chewing on his cigarette, Reno admits that it makes some sense, but he also notices that she only used one name. A darkness flashes in his bones.

"What about me?" Reno asks, still unflapped.

Instead of saying anything, Aeris lowers herself back onto her ladder. Reno's eyes follow the bow on top of her head as it sways.

"I'm going to make you a pot anyway, something hardy," Aeris declares. "Maybe someone in Shinra will notice it and finally snatch me up for an urban development position."

Secretly, Reno is glad that she avoids his question.

* * *

When Tseng gets back, Reno is waiting in his office, holding a stack of letters in his palm and flicking through the notes like it's a flip book. He wonders if he _should_ draw a flip book on them. Maybe one where Aeris shoots Tseng in the foot, and he hops away, howling.

Tseng approaches Reno before the younger Turk hears the door open. "Get out of my chair, Reno."

Looking up into his lidded eyes, Reno offers a smug grin. "I got a proposition for you, Boss."

"We're the Turks, Reno," Tseng says, "we don't operate on propositions. _I_ tell _you_ what to do."

"Then, in the interest of maintaining that status quo and allowing you to continue being everyone's favorite Bossman, I've decided to offer my services as permanent Pinky spy."

Tseng's eyes shrink. Unflappable points lost. "Excuse me?"

"I have reason to believe you're emotionally compromised," Reno says. "There's an awkward sum of money that gets sent out on the company's coin for Turk privileges. It doesn't go toward cigarettes or booze, ya? Or fancy new suits, hair ties, whatever strange makeup you use to make that dot in the middle of your forehead; it just vanishes! Meanwhile, Pinky's got all these weird flowers: some I swear I haven't seen outside of Wutai, of all the backwoods places. The only thing I can't figure out is how they get down there; my money's on that explosives route, though. Mighty convenient."

Remaining still, Tseng lowers his eyelids and crosses his arms. "If Hojo knew about this, he'd have me fired."

Shrugging, Reno says, "Personally, I think it's a great tactic: get her to trust you, toss her in a traveling bag, bring home the big bucks."

There it is, Reno thinks, right in the middle of Tseng's office. They're talking about what happens when they can't _just watch her _anymore. It's as impossible to navigate around as the giant stack of undelivered letters. They could decide, right there, to take her in, and she wouldn't even know.

Of course, Tseng manages to dodge it; that's why he's the boss. He's also the boss because he knows how to pick his fights, and this isn't one of them. "Fine, you watch her, then. This will give me a chance to focus on more important things like the explosives trade you mentioned."

Satisfied, Reno uncrosses his legs and heads for the door of Tseng's office.

"By the way, Reno," Tseng says, "I like your new desk décor. It seems you're better at the trust and toss game than I."

Reno freezes in the doorway. Loss of unflappable points; it's terrible, really, but all Reno can think is that Tseng has answered the question he had asked Aeris for her.

* * *

"You should tell me about some of the places you've been," Aeris says the next day, watering a patch of magnolias. These ones, now—they look like they're on fire.

Reno has her figured out, though; he figured it out when he went back to his office after he talked to Tseng and stared at the pot of pink flowers on his desk. She never talks about it, but it's in the yarrow in the letters and the Alstroemeria she picked out for him. "Aspiration," she'd said. Reno had considered it funny at the time because he didn't consider himself a man with big aspirations. But she had them; he just had not figured it out before: the bar, the cigarettes, the flower seeds, even the double aces...

"Finally," Reno says, impassive, "you show your true colors."

Putting the pot down, Aeris turns to where Reno sits in the front pew, her smiles still plastered on her face. "Excuse me?"

"You're never going to leave Midgar, Aeris, or even see the sky," Reno says. "It's about time you stop playing games."

"Who said anything—?"

Reno throws a new box of Cosmo Spirits at Aeris' feet. "You're a lot like the people of Cosmo Canyon, Pinky. They refuse to acknowledge the fact that, one day, their magic candle's going to burn out, only you'll never see their candle, and _that's_ what you refuse to acknowledge."

Instead of acting scared, Aeris steps closer to him and stoops down to look in his eyes; at least she has stopped smiling. She puts her hands on her thighs and stares. He can't see her neck, so he's forced to stare back, to dip into the green not so unlike the plains outside of Midgar for which she yearns. Aeris smiles again, a little incredulous upturn at the corner of her lip. "You're serious, aren't you? You think I talk to you because I believe you'll take me out of here? I'm not stupid."

In an instant, Reno's arm darts out, and he grabs her wrist before she can laugh her horrible laugh. She stumbles forward, having been supporting herself with her palms, and he uses the momentum to fling the right side of her body into the church pew. The seat connects with her waist, and she yelps, her eyes open wide. Reno feels the heartbeat in Aeris' wrist quicken, but only a little, not nearly as much as it should. She's more shocked than afraid.

The sudden movement sends the smell of freesia in waves around Reno. He pulls her onto the seat as the scent fades and kneels to meet her at eye level, still clutching her wrist. Aeris Gainsborough stares back at him defiantly, her thin lips tight, her other elbow at an angle by her side. The color has faded from her eyes so that they more resemble the drab green of the church meadow.

"_Why_?" Reno asks her, "why do you talk to me and not Tseng?"

"Because I'm not afraid of you," Aeris says.

His heartbeat picks up instead of hers. Reno swallows to calm himself. Secretly, he likes watching the eyes glare at him, he likes hearing that she isn't afraid because he can't remember the last time someone wasn't, but _she should be afraid_. Barely thinking, Reno leans in and kisses her. Her mouth doesn't relent, and it makes him think of kissing the clay flower pot on his desk. Lips taste like soil as he tries to pull them into his mouth, which doesn't help. Even so, his breath shudders in his throat and he's floating up so _high_ like smoke. Then he feels a sharp sting on his lower lip followed by the familiar taste of blood, and he's plummeting, thudding back down into the soil, tied up in roots.

Reno pulls away and lets go of her wrists. He wipes the blood from his face. It's a bit funny; he realizes he had wanted her to bite him. He is so glad she hasn't given in yet, that she has enough spunk to make this _fun_.

"You might not be afraid of me now," Reno snarls, "but you're about to be."

"Oh?" Aeris' eyes flash, challenging. It reminds him of an EM charge.

"Come with me." Reno grabs her wrist again. This time, the heart starts racing because she knows. She knows he's going to turn her in.

* * *

The night after Reno confronts Tseng, he sits at his desk with his ankles propped, crossed above another Shinra folder, only two stamps this time. Reno holds the nearly empty box of Cosmo Spirits and watches as the last cigarette rolls around inside. A lot of Reno's spare time, the time he spends _not sleeping_, revolves around trying to think about the worst possible thing to do to someone. For boys singing in bars, that worst thing is winning away their first pay check and proving to them that the slums promise no real future. For Tseng, he's just done it—most likely. For Rude, he wouldn't say. He knows it, of course, but even admitting what it is to himself feels too horrible; Rude is his last ticket, his partner against all odds, the only man he wouldn't mind getting shot by, if it ever came to that.

Reno does this because experience has taught him that the worst thing one can do to a person is often the most valuable thing to know about him. Its utility cannot be understated as it ranges from simple entertainment to finishing up a job efficiently. Reno just completes a plan that will allow him to do the worst possible thing to Aeris Gainsborough when Rude knocks on his door.

"Come in," Reno says.

Rude enters his office holding the stack of Zack Fair letters and drops them on Reno's desk next to the pot of Alstroemeria.

"What are these for?"

"Boss says they're your responsibility now, seeing as you've taken over the Gainsborough case."

Reno stares at the envelopes, smelling the yarrow and smoke. "I guess that means I'm calling the shots when it comes to Pinky, doesn't it?"

The bald man shrugs. "Guess so."

Rude starts to leave, but Reno calls after him. "Hey, you haven't said anything about my flowers."

Reno doesn't even laugh as Rude ignores him and closes the door behind him; he stares back at his box of Cosmo Spirits and wonders what it would be like to be the last cigarette.

* * *

"You aren't afraid of me," Reno says, "because you think I'll never turn you in. I don't know how you got that into your scheming little head, but I'm about to prove you wrong, Pinky. I'm a hell of a lot worse than Tseng."

Aeris, who has been struggling the whole way along the path from the church to the train stop in Sector 5, spits in Reno's face. Reno smirks back at her, not even bothering to wipe his cheek. His pours are getting dry anyway. "Sorry, Doll, but it's too late to kiss me now; you blew it."

"You just trampled all over anything redeemable I saw in you."

"My character qualities aren't flowers, Aeris," Reno says. He's still holding her wrist, even as she claws at it, creating a sharp sting as wet as his cheek. Gainsborough is stronger than Reno had expected, but still weak. Aside from yanking on his ponytail and clawing him, she has not put up much of a fight. The two of them finally reach to train stop of Sector Five, and Reno twists Aeris' arm back, forcing her to sit at the bench. She crosses her legs and fumes, widening her nostrils. Reno stares at her neck to avert his eyes from the uninteresting view.

"I'm surprised," Reno says after a few minutes, "I expected you to cry."

"I'm not crying because you aren't going to take me to Shinra."

Though this surprises Reno, he remains unflapped. He tightens his grip on her wrist until she yelps. "I'm not?"

"No, you aren't," Aeris says, gritting her teeth. "If you were, you wouldn't have told me I'd never see the sky. The train goes above the plate, so I'd see it out the window."

"I hate to break it to you, Pinky, but glass domes and windows don't count as the sky."

_There_. That's it. Aeris' wrist trembles. She begins to pull her limbs as far into herself as they'll go. Her heartrate quickens, and this time it isn't just shock.

"I don't believe you."

Lie. Her body betrays her, even the quiver of her voice, which reminds Reno of the quaking baritones singing the chorus of 'Turquoise Materia' in the Sector Five bar.

"What will happen to the flowers?"

Part of Reno wants to hit her with his EM rod. "The _flowers_? You're still worried about the flowers?"

He imagines shoving her from the seat to teach her a lesson, but then he understands what she's admitting. "No one can grow them but you, you know. Not down here, especially not me."

"They don't want to recruit me," Aeris says.

No one has ever told Reno what Shinra plans to do to Aeris, but he knows Hojo; he can work two pieces of information together. "They want to put you on an operating table and pull you apart."

"_No_," Aeris says. She tries to use both of her hands to cover her face as tears slip down her cheeks, but Reno won't let one of them go. Aeris closes her eyes and folds her knees under her forehead. "There's nothing about me that they want. I'm _normal_."

"You hear voices that other people don't, Pinky. That ain't normal." Reno pulls a cigarette out of her braid and forces it between his teeth. He fishes the lighter out of his breast pocket with his free hand and sets the end burning. "In fact, I bet that's why that SOLDIER kid hasn't written you back at all."

Aeris freezes up, like Reno in the doorway of Tseng's office, and Reno realizes that it's as close to payback as he's going to get. "How did you know about that?"

Reno plows forward. "It's probably why you aren't afraid of me either. Normal people are, Doll. I terrify the living shit out of people because I'm a Turk. Why do you think no one helped you the whole way here? You screamed up a storm. Had I been anyone else, wearing anything but a Turk uniform, someone would have stopped me. Hell, a pretty girl like you, I probably would have. But all this time we've had together, and you—"

On an indeterminate list of things Reno had not expected Aeris Gainsborough to do, hitting him this far down the line ranks number one. Funny, considering, when he thinks about it, he'd definitely have hit himself—well, maybe not himself, but whatever asshole had been barking on about the one thing he never wanted to hear. She hit him hard, too. There is a stinging bruise forming on his lower jaw. He presses his tongue against the back of his front teeth and feels a couple of them wiggle.

As much as Reno had not expected Aeris to hit him, however, Reno has grown accustomed to getting hit, whether he expects it or not, so it does not take him long to regroup. Aeris makes it about three feet away from the bench before Reno leaps and tackles her, grabbing both of her arms this time. He mourns the loss of his cigarette as he stamps it out by the bench.

"_See_," Reno breathes down her neck, and she shudders against his chest. He's so close he can feel her neck twitch against his lips like finger snaps. "Normal people don't do _that_ to me unless they want to die. Do you want to die, Pinky?"

"No," she whispers.

"Then you ain't normal."

Aeris says nothing. Reno stews for a moment, tastes the ash still in his mouth, mixed with the blood from his loose teeth. She is afraid of him, finally; she's just—what's that word, again?—unflappable. He can feel it in her body, but her voice remains stiff. She smells like her magnolias as he holds her arms behind her back. He supposes he's done; he can let her go.

Over his shoulder, Reno hears the blaring of train engines, feels the heat of approaching mako steam at his back. Inwardly, Reno curses. Damn unreliable train schedules; it wasn't supposed to come for another ten minutes, but _no_, it had to be early—or extremely late—so that he couldn't make his speech.

The cliff notes would have to do.

"Last night, I tried to think of the worst possible thing I could do to you," Reno whispers, "and I decided this is it. I'm going to scare the shit out of you and let you go because now you get it; now you _know_ what has to happen if I catch you again, and you have to live with that. Tseng might he the Boss, but I'm much worse than he is."

As the train screeches to a halt, Aeris jolts out of her frozen stupor. Reno releases her arms, and she runs, not bothering to turn to see if he is chasing her. He watches as she leaps down the stairs, figuring she'll head home. She doesn't run like she's scared, though, just like she's heading somewhere as quickly as possible.

Reno flops down on the park bench, thumbing his loose teeth. He lights another cigarette from his new pack of Cosmo Spirits, and his eyes water.

He tells himself it's just the smoke, not the magnolias and freesia still in the air.

* * *

At his desk, Reno has his window wide open, smelling the smog cushioning the dome around the Shinra building. He stares between the stack of Fair letters and a pot of Alstroemeria for a few moments before he sinks his hand into the soil. The pot rolls of the desk and shatters as Reno pulls the flower from it and takes it to the window ledge.

He had gone to watch Aeris Gainsborough from the rafters that day, the day after he had dragged her to the train station, but she had not acknowledged him. She had acted like she didn't _know_. Touching the tip of his cigarette to the petal of the flower, Reno lights it on fire. It smolders, the pink shriveling, writhing. Reno imagines he hears it crying and whimpering, snapping like an elbow in his hands. In only a few moments, however, the flame catches a false breeze in the air and roars, consuming the bloom, swallowing its way down the flower stem. Reno drops it and the fire goes out; the smoke wafts, joining the smog at the pinnacle of the Shinra dome even as the Alstroemeria falls.

Behind Reno, the door to his office opens. He turns around to see Rude standing in his doorway, staring at the shattered flower pot on the floor. When Rude tucks his hand inside his suit, where Reno knows he keeps his gun, it's isn't a threat; it's a warning.

"This is done, isn't it?" Rude asks.

"You know doctors, Rude," Reno says, turning back to the window. "They always cut off the whole limb when you've got gangrene." He sucks his cigarette. "Luckily, I have a death-dealing prosthetic to look forward to."

Rude remains as Reno flops back into his chair to stare at the letters, which have become impossible _not_ to stare at without the flowers to distract him. It stings, just like his bottom lip and the side of his head, but Rude's right; it's done.

Aeris had had a metal staff in her hands that day. She used it to beat at the shaky wooden church pillars and get a little bit stronger, but she had kept the pink bow, the cigarettes folded in the braids.

Reno knows why Aeris never asked him if he thought Shinra would want her for the Turks—

It's simple. He would have said yes.

-Please review!-


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